She paused and the spokesman of the captains said,

“We hear, O Hiya, and we understand.  What wouldst thou have us do, O Lulala-come-to-earth?  The armies of Rezu are great and from the beginning he has hated thee and us, also his magic is as thy magic and his length of days as thy length of days.  How then can we who are few, three thousand men at the most, match ourselves against Rezu, Son of the Sun?  Would it not be better that we should accept the terms of Rezu, which are light, and acknowledge him as our king?”

As she heard these words I saw the tall shape of Ayesha quiver beneath her robes, as I think, not with fear but with rage, because the meaning of them was clear enough, namely that rather than risk a battle with Rezu, these people were contemplating surrender and her own deposition, if indeed she could be deposed.  Still she answered in a quiet voice,

“It seems that I have dealt too gently with you and with your fathers, Children of Lulala, whose shadow I am here upon the earth, so that because you only see the scabbard, you have forgotten the sword within and that it can shine forth and smite.  Well, why should I be wrath because the brutish will follow the law of brutes, though it be true that I am minded to slay you where you stand?  Hearken!  Were I less merciful I would leave you to the clutching hands of Rezu, who would drag you one by one to the stone of sacrifice and there offer up your hearts to his god of fire and devour your bodies with his heat.  But I bethink me of your wives and children and of your forefathers whom I knew in the dead days, and therefore, if I may, I still would save you from yourselves and your heads from the glowing pot.

“Take counsel together now and say—­Will you fight against Rezu, or will you yield?  If that is your desire, speak it, and by to-morrow’s sun I will begone, taking these with me,” and she pointed to us, “whom I have summoned to help us in the war.  Aye, I will begone, and when you are stretched upon the stone of sacrifice, and your women and children are the slaves of the men of Rezu, then shall you cry,

“’Oh, where is Hiya whom our fathers knew?  Oh, will she not return and save us from this hell?’

“Yes, so shall you cry but there shall come no answer, since then she will have departed to her own habitations in the moon and thence appear no more.  Now consult together and answer swiftly, since I weary of you and your ways.”

The captains drew apart and began to talk in low voices, while Ayesha stood still, apparently quite unconcerned, and I considered the situation.

It was obvious to me that these people were almost in rebellion against their strange ruler, whose power over them was of a purely moral nature, one that emanated from her personality alone.  What I wondered was, being what she seemed to be, why she thought it worth while to exercise it at all.  Then I remembered her statement that here and nowhere else she must abide for some secret reason, until a certain mystical gentleman with a Greek name came to fetch her away from this appointed rendezvous.  Therefore I supposed she had no choice, or rather, suffering as she did from hallucinations, believed herself to have no choice and was obliged to put up with a crowd of disagreeable savages in quarters which were sadly out of repair.